Free Because You Loved Me by M. William Phelps Page B

variety of antidepressants. He took the pills at night. It was important he took his medication, for Patricia knew things fell apart rather quickly for Billy when he failed to medicate himself regularly.
    “Yes, Mom.”
    As the murder scene back at Jeanne’s unfolded, Nicole and Billy drove around town. Unless they had been stalking the scene from afar, neither could have known cops were scurrying around, collecting evidence, interviewing neighbors and friends, trying desperately to figure out what had happened. Nicole had no idea that her brother, Drew, a wayward boy at odds with his mother, was now aware that she was dead—or that Drew was out there on the front lawn, like everyone else, answering questions, weeping, trying to comprehend it all.
    While they were out, Billy stopped at a nearby shopping mall. Nicole bought him a new pair of socks and a T-shirt. For some reason, Billy felt the need to wear them that night and changed clothes just down the street from Jeanne’s in the parking lot of a local movie theater.
    Nicole had called home a few times, but, of course, no one answered, so she left several messages, saying she and Billy were “running late” and would be home as soon as they could. After all, it was their last night together. They had to make the best of the time they had left. By Thursday morning, life would be, Nicole later wrote in her diary, a “hellhole” she saw no way of digging out of. Nicole wrote that she’d likely sit in her room, hug her favorite pillow, listen to music that reminded her of Billy and try to figure out a way to be with him again. Any depression she had suffered throughout the past six months was going to escalate. She was sure of it. And Billy, well, he was going to be back at McDonald’s flipping burgers, making sandwiches he cared little about, wondering how he was going to convince Jeanne to allow the relationship to continue.
    “Let’s take off to Connecticut,” Nicole suggested at one point that night as Billy drove.
    “No,” Billy said for a second time, “the cops will be at my door two days later.”
    “Vermont. Let’s go to Vermont, or Niagara Falls, like we talked about.”
    “Come on, Nicole.”
    After leaving the movie theater parking lot and stopping a few additional places around town, Billy drove to Amanda Kane’ s house. Amanda was Jeanne’s best friend. She lived about three miles east of Jeanne’s, over near the intersection of Greeley Park and Route 3, the main interstate leading into downtown Nashua. Amanda’s house was small, but the perfect suburban haven she desired. Jeanne, Billy, Nicole, Drew and Chris had helped Amanda move into the house the previous Friday, August 1. Some of her things were still unpacked. In boxes. Sitting all over the place. Amanda was planning on having Jeanne and Chris back over that Saturday to help finish unpacking.
    Amanda had known Jeanne for close to fifteen years: they had worked together at one time and met through the companionship of spending eight hours next to each other, five days a week. Amanda was quite different than most of Jeanne’s friends.
    “Very reclusive,” said a former friend. “[Amanda] rarely goes anywhere aside from work, five days a week. She is an unbelievable chain-smoker that sits at home with her two cats…. She records her soap operas and watches them religiously. Jeanne would go to Amanda’s house on Saturdays and do all her housework (vacuuming, dusting and other minor chores)…. Jeanne provided her with some well-needed companionship. Jeanne accepted [Amanda] for who she was…. She is not a badperson, just for the fact that she is very antisocial.”
    Jeanne, without a doubt, loved Amanda dearly.
    Especially short at four feet ten inches, and a bit heavy, forty-five-year-old Amanda wore her Puerto Rican heritage well. She was born and raised in New York City; her parents were in Puerto Rico, her grandparents in Spain.
    “I’m pretty Latin, all the way down to my